Slashdot Mirror
360 Live Arcade Details Out
Edge Online has a short piece on Xbox VP Peter Moore's announcement of the Live Arcade's full potential. Gamespot has a list of the planned titles, which is thoroughly impressive, including hits like Bejeweled 2, SmashTV, and Wik:Fable of Souls. From the Edge article: "Amongst the 40-odd developers slated for further Live Arcade development are Namco, SEGA, Konami, Capcom, SNK Playmore and Hudson Soft providing a selection of their retro titles, as well as the usual lineup of casual PC game producers like Wild Tangent, PopCap, and GarageGames, but the two most unexpected additions to the list are Mizuguchi's upstart Q Entertainment and AntiGrav/Guitar Hero developers Harmonix."
Go read some of the console discussion boards about what a joke Microsoft's online service is and what you actually get for all the money you waste a year on it.
It is hilarious to see some xbox fanboy start sweating and bullshiting when you try to nail them down on why the fuck should a gamer have to shell out so much cash to Microsoft every year for what they will get for free from Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft's online service is an absurd ripoff. They better drop the price to free like Sony and Nintendo or they are going to lose what tiny remnants of their existing installed base are still planning on buying a 360.
While their games appear to be of good quality and they had some nifty screensavers, the WildTangent package is also a spyware/adware enabler. I had it at one time, and eventually (regretfully) removed it because of the spyware/adware aspects.
If this is one of the vendors that Microsoft is allowing into their XBox Live Arcade program, then I will have to think twice before signing up for it.
Bad enough to have that sort of thing on a PC where with sufficient care it can be removed. I fear that once it's on the XBox360's HD it'll be collecting all sorts of data on my buying and playing habits, and I'll never be able to get it off.
While it is excessively obnoxious, spyware for them is a way to generate revenue. If they could instead charge directly for their games and get people to pay, they probably would. Hence the Live Arcade connection. While you shouldn't necessarily trust them instantly, you might want to find out what they actually do before writing them off completely.
I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned what a boon this could be to indie developers, who might come up with some great original gameplay but not have millions of dollars to produce a full-blown game release. The ability to get some simpler yet fun independent games via XBL, if utilized, could be a great feature.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Many of those games require a mouse to be played properly (for example, Wik does). Will Microsoft make an official one for the X360 or will we be stuck using an analog stick to slowly push a cursor around?
Also, isn't going after casual/non gamers with a "complicated" control scheme like that rather stupid? Would your mom or dad (whoever is the casual gamer) rather play a game with a mouse where he/she just needs to point and click or with a gamepad (or that remote MS is offering) with more sticks and buttons than they can handle?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Dearest Mircosoft, While many soccer moms are probably happy at your addition of bejeweled to 360 live, could we please get some classic street fighter 2, mortal kombat 1 and 2, killer instinct, etc games on there that have VS mode online? Thanks. I'm sure I can pick up super hyper street fighter vs Snk vs your mother, but I'd really like to just play good old SF with some friends online.
I worked for WildTangent until I was drummed out the door in 2001. The product always "called home" for updates (something the core of the company was 50/50 on) and if you joined the game channel it would stream in games and adds that were in-game (like on billboards of a race game, etc). To my knowledge that has not changed, even though Spybot picks it up as Spyware. I does call home though, which always annoyed the security sensitive folks (and rightfully so).
Now it has been 4 years, so they may have changed, but I just installed it as a test and so far no popups, XP SP2/IE/Netscape/Opera. On the Xbox 360 I'm sure that MS isn't about to have popups etc.
Heck even chess, checkers, Monopoly, etc. would be an improvement over nothing.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How would that possibly even work? When you run PGR3 or DOA4 or whatever it takes total control of the console. It's not like a PC where you can have something running in the background. The game will monopolize the processor. It's possible this isn't true for Xbox Arcade games, but is there any kind of valuable info even available? And that is assuming MS even allows this info to get back to WildTangent, since it would be running on MS' servers.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
No, Live costs up to $50 per month. If the rest of your family is happy with antenna TV and Netscape dial-up for $120/yr ($10/mo), and the cheapest broadband available in your geographic area is cable at $670/yr (approx. $56/mo) for customers who aren't cable TV subscribers, then the upgrade from dial-up to broadband+Live is $600/yr ($50/mo). Moving house to a DSL serviced area is probably even more expensive.
So you seriously count narrowband gaming as a significant facor in anything at this point? And why are you billing MS just for internet service? If Xbox Live costs $50 a month (rather than the real figure of
But what I pay for is a persistent name throughout all games. I pay for friends lists that exist on Xbox Live rather than on only a single game's servers. I pay for game invites in Halo 2 when I'm playing a game of Ghost Recon 2. I pay for voice chat enabled as a standard.
No, Xbox Live is not perfect, but it is FAR ahead of anything Sony or Nintendo are offering and even seem to be offering any time soon.
"This is considered plagiarism."
So you seriously count narrowband gaming as a significant facor in anything at this point?
There are plenty of casual games that work fine with throughput < 2 Kbytes/s and latency > 500ms. Does chess need broadband? Does a monopolistic property trading game need broadband? Does a multiplayer tetramino game need broadband?
So you seriously count narrowband gaming as a significant facor in anything at this point? And why are you billing MS just for internet service?
I'm not necessarily billing Microsoft for the whole deal. Even so, if both the local cable company and the local telephone company have high speed Internet products that come "with MSN Premium", then I'm still paying Microsoft.
Xbox Live is not perfect, but it is FAR ahead of anything Sony or Nintendo are offering and even seem to be offering any time soon.
But in geographic areas without affordable residential broadband Internet access, such as most of the United States of America, Nintendo still has the same-screen multiplayer market cornered.